The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with Gamer Sensei to connect competitive collegiate esports players with the world’s largest and most carefully curated collection of professional coaches.

The partnership between NACE and Gamer Sensei will better enable colleges and universities launching esports departments or expanding the number of games they compete in to find qualified coaches that will lead these collegiate teams to victory.

As part of the new partnership, NACE will educate member institutions about Gamer Sensei’s coaching platform, while welcoming all members to take advantage of preferred access and rates only available to NACE members. To preserve competitive integrity, Gamer Sensei coaches contracted to member institutions will be limited to working with only one institution per season at the varsity level. In addition, NACE and Gamer Sensei will host celebrity coaching seminars and bootcamps for NACE member institutions and administrative staff.

“NACE is constantly looking for ways to streamline and accelerate the growth of varsity esports programs on college campuses across North America. One major area of struggle for our member colleges, and certainly those institutions looking to start an esports program, has been finding individuals with the skill and background to lead teams. The geographic growth of varsity esports has complicated staffing further as much of our growth is in the Midwest and East Coast of the U.S., though much of the professional expertise needed tends to be centralized on the West Coast. This is partly why our partnership with Gamer Sensei is so exciting, in that it removes the geographical barriers separating individuals with the desire and ability to lead and grow teams with the institutions that are making the investment into esports for their students,” said Michael Brooks, NACE Executive Director.

“Gamer Sensei has already demonstrated the effectiveness of our approach while working with schools like Becker College and Boise State, providing top-tier coaches for their esports programs,” said Ankith Harathi, Head of Growth for Gamer Sensei. “As more colleges look to get serious about esports, the timing could not be better for us to join forces with NACE. We’re excited to work closely with NACE and its member institutions with the goal of not just connecting more schools with our pool of the best esports coaches, but to also help them succeed in creating truly world-class esports programs at every level.”

“When we were starting our program at Kansas Wesleyan University we didn’t know where to go to find coaches. There was no resource like Gamer Sensei available to us at that time and, in the end, we ended up hiring a graduate assistant who was a close friend of mine. Now that Gamer Sensei is a partner with NACE and finding great coaches is not as big of a hurdle as it once was, we feel confident that we can guide our schools in developing even more advanced programs, as well as encouraging them to expand the games in which they compete,” said Layne Shirley, NACE Esports Manager & KWU Esports Founder.

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About NACE

The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) is a nonprofit membership association organized by and on behalf of our member institutions and is the only governing body of college esports in North America. Together, our members are developing the structure and tools needed to advance collegiate eSports in the varsity space. We are collaborating to lay the groundwork in areas such as: Eligibility, Path to Graduation, and Competition & Scholarships. NACE currently has 68 varsity esports programs as members, accounting for nearly all (94%) varsity programs across North America.

About Gamer Sensei

Gamer Sensei (www.gamersensei.com) is the world’s first and most popular competitive coaching platform for players who want to win more in their favorite online games. Gamer Sensei’s esports coaches are among the best pro gamers in the world, hand-picked and matched with students via a patent-pending algorithm. Gamer Sensei coaches provide personalized one-on-one lessons to help gamers of all skill levels in their quest to make epic plays and reach the next level. Gamer Sensei offers coaching for today’s most popular competitive games, including DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from Valve Corporation; Overwatch, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft II from Activision Blizzard; League of Legends from Riot Games; Elder Scrolls: Legends from Bethesda; GWENT from CD Projekt Red and World of Tanks from Wargaming.